This week’s fresh listings:

This page is to be updated every Tuesday and will contain all the latest Coin, Medal & Token listings for that particular week.

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Additions to www.HistoryInCoins.com for week commencing Tuesday 13th January 2026

This week, a pair of nice enough English coins but those

COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWED

by the Irish pair!!

WMH-9251: Henry VI Medieval Hammered Silver Halfgroat. First reign, Rosette-Mascle issue of 1430-31 only. Calais mint: S.R. 1862. A veritable proliferation of Rosettes with just a single Mascle each side. In case you're wondering what right England had in minting coins from Calais, the answer is that England owned Calais from the reign of Edward III until Mary's reign in 1558; the paperwork to finally give up Calais being finalised under Elizabeth 1st in the Treaty of Troyes. Some say it was a vanity project by the English and it probably was to a point (it certainly cost almost 1/5th of all the revenue collected in England to maintain Calais as an English possession, not to mention the loss of lives, most famously the Battle of Agincourt), but the port of Calais was really important to England in terms of transport and trade. Henry VI was born December 6, 1421 in Windsor, Berkshire and died May 21 or 22, 1471 in London. He reigned from 1422 to 1461 and then from 1470 to 1471. He was a pious and studious recluse whose incapacity for government was one of the causes of the Wars of the Roses. A very nice example. £295

WJC-9252: Charles 1st Hammered Silver Halfcrown. Initial mark Triangle-in-Circle, 1641-3, Gp. IV, fourth horseman, 14.99 grams. Tower mint under the king. S.R. 2779. Issued right at the very end of the period where Charles 1st had any kind of association with the Tower Mint - Parliament took control in 1643 and the rest is history! Civil War was about to break out in England and as such, the quality of the coinage was as nothing compared to simply rushing coinage out of the mint as a vehicle for paying for the war. Hastily sunk dies with a workforce not all at the top of their game, together with the frenetic expeditious production of coinage leading up to the Civil War resulted in poor quality currency being dumped into circulation, although it is important to understand that the silver content was very much up to standard and that was really all that mattered as far as the public was concerned. This coin is virtually full weight - it is actually quite rare to see halfcrowns at 15g or more as any extra silver in the coin was literally giving money away for free. This coin must indicate practically zero loss of weight through circulation, it being an irregular flan and definitely not clipped, and the high grade certainly backs that up. Brooker had x6 initial mark Triangle-in-Circle halfcrowns (weights: 14.98g, 15.5g, 15.23g, 13.58g, 14.66g and 15.29). This coin is not quite as good than the best of the Booker six (#373) but is better than the other five. Remember, Brooker was a serious collector with deep pockets who was on the lookout for the very best examples of Charles 1st coinage for his collection. A very good grade coin, described as "Pleasing VF" on the ticket. £435

WI-9253: A Truly Exceptional, "As Struck" Irish Charles 1st Hammered Silver “BLACKSMITH’S” Halfcrown. The Great Rebellion - issue of the Confederate Catholics, circa 1642. Struck at Kilkenny. Initial mark Cross Pattee (obv), Irish Hark (rev). Struck shortly after 15th November 1642, very much in the style of the London Tower issues but from crude dies, hence "Blacksmith". A very clear reverse initial mark Harp (this image being taken in natural light, via a camera phone and actually being much more representative of the actual coin itself). Obverse initial image is a Cross. 13.41g, 8h, and 35mm. Bull 30, D&F 335, CC IC1HC-030, Spink 6557A. An unusually high grade example of this excessively rare, usually poor issue and rare thus. Coincraft states: “...struck in Kilkenny, this issue was very crude in both style and production…” I dug out my (very) old listing of a previous Blacksmith halfcrown in which I'd stated: "If you’re waiting to acquire something resembling an English Charles 1st half crown for your collection, even in Fine or less grade, save yourself an indeterminate wait as they do not exist". I was perhaps a little hasty in that statement because apart from the obvious crude nature of the dies and the angled strike, this coin is actually as good, and better, than a lot of English Charles 1st halfcrowns! Imaged here are the only other two examples of this issue that I have owned and sold over many decades. Moving on to the Coincraft plate examples (S.R.6557 and 6557A), both show decent reverses but both obverses are blurred / wishy-washy; an indication as to just how hard it was to get these Blacksmith dies up to muster - or perhaps this was an intentional feature by the moneyer as worn coins attract far less attention, something to be coveted if you're issuing non-Regal coin! The S.R. plate coins are quite good examples (as you'd expect, those plate coins probably being the two best grade examples extant), but even there, the level of detail for Charles 1st is not a patch as to what it is on this coin. The dies were not only crude but were made with perhaps not intentional built-in wear, but in a way that made it nigh on impossible for a quality coin to be produced from said dies. Those of you familiar with this issue will appreciate just how good an example this coin actually is, albeit minted with a very angled strike. The silver content of this coin in particular would easily have been good enough to sit alongside all the other eclectic coinage of the day as general currency in 1600's Ireland. Only 4,000 of these coins were struck, using at least two different obverse dies, which is a tiny number - I recently came across some research by the excellent Chris Comber, Walter Wilkinson and David Brown which stated that Elizabeth 1st sixpences had a current-day survival rate of between 4-10 coins per die. Now although slightly earlier in date, Elizabeth 1st sixpences are clearly going to be greater survivors that Irish Blacksmith halfcrowns struck during the tumultuous period of the English Civil War, so by those figures, 20 extant Blacksmith halfcrowns would be exceedingly optimistic! Note the regnal name together with the king's upper half - beautifully toned and getting on for EF in grade, which is frankly amazing. In view of what I wrote above [... dies were not only crude but were made with perhaps not intentional built-in wear, but in a way that made it nigh on impossible for a quality coin to be produced from said dies], I'd suggest a Blacksmith halfcrown could never be minted in high grade, no matter how good the dies were, UNLESS the strike was angled, such was the nature of the dies themselves, together with the "Blacksmith's" undoubted skill at making horseshoes but perhaps not so much at minting coins! A fabulous and excessively rare coin. Find better!! £5,875

WI-9254: A Superb Irish Edward VI Hammered Billon Silver Sixpence. Issued under Edward VI but struck in the name of his father, Henry VIII. Struck at 0.250 fine, being groat sized but very much a sixpence. Dublin mint, the rarer and more desirable type II with the large facing bust of "local style" as opposed to Tower dies, S.R. 6486. It gets better - initial mark BOAR'S HEAD, and then there's the grade! It is interesting to note that this entire issue was struck in Henry's name, not because Edward was a mere child (he was only 15 when he died in 1553), rather because the ministers in England wanted to deceive the Irish public. The state of coin in Ireland under Henry VIII was dreadful, as it was in England, although Ireland was worse. The plan was to "clean up" the Irish coinage along the lines of the English 1551 "Fine Silver" issue but to finance that, the Irish would be fed a further several years of little better than base coinage purporting to be silver. To issue this coinage in Edward's name would be to red-flag what the ministers were not just plotting but literally doing, but to suggest that the new coinage was actually not new, rather old Henry VIII coinage, might just pull the wool over the Irish eyes. Bad enough, you might think, but when you consider that the next monarch, Mary, issued Irish coinage at 0.583 fine (the English 1551 Fine Issue was 0.925 fine), the following (Mary & Philip) at 0.250 fine, and even Elizabeth 1st until 1561 at 0.25 fine, you realise that the Irish had it bad. In 1561, Elizabeth 1st finally upped the silver content, not to 0.925 but to a respectable 0.916 fine). Coincraft states that this local, S.R. 6486 issue is really only obtainable in lower grades with examples tending to be "...poorly struck" and "...often rather dull due to their low metal [silver] content". A rare coin, an interesting history behind it, and in excellent grade for issue. £875

Provenance:

ex Tim Owen